B&B Boys Get PR Break
Yasser Arafat died and a California man was convicted of murdering his pregnant
wife. Bush and Blair caught a break with these sensational stories bumping the
battle for Falluja from top billing in the news.

Falluja was a city similar in size and working class
composition to Flint, Michigan. I say was because much of the population
heeded the call of U.S. commanders, and their puppet government in Baghdad, to
flee for their lives. Those who couldn’t, or wouldn’t abandon their homes find
themselves cowering among rubble reminiscent of pictures of Berlin in 1945. The
religious among them had to skip going to their mosque on Friday because those
are considered resistance centers and have all been heavily damaged by air
strikes and artillery.

There are critical shortages of drinking water and medicine.
But American commanders, even as they claim to completely control the city, at
the time of writing of this column are still blocking a Red Crescent relief
convoy.

A local journalist reporting to the BBC confirms the American
claim of control–during daylight hours. But, he continues, "The night belongs to
the fighters. Under cover of darkness, they regroup and receive fresh weapons
and ammunition. They are elusive figures. I have seen them in action, firing
mortars and grenades at American troops. Anyone who moves around at night is a
target. The fighters can shoot you if they mistake you for an American. The
Americans, who leave some snipers behind in the city every night, will get you
if they think you are a fighter."

American brass claim 1200 "insurgents" have been killed in
Falluja along with an unknown number of "civilians." Back in the days when
President Johnson was urging commanders in Vietnam to "nail some coon skins to
the wall," all dead over the age of ten were routinely counted as VC. I suspect
these tried and true counting methods are still being applied today.

Thirty-one U.S. and six RVN–excuse me, Iraqi–troops have been
killed in Falluja combat. More than 500 GIs have received serious wounds
requiring evacuation to Army hospitals in Germany.

Some devastating wounds are not immediately apparent. A story
in today’s Los Angeles Times reports, "A study by the Walter Reed Army
Institute of Research found that 15.6% of Marines and 17.1% of soldiers surveyed
after they returned from Iraq suffered major depression, generalized anxiety or
post-traumatic stress disorder — a debilitating, sometimes lifelong change in
the brain's chemistry that can include flashbacks, sleep disorders, panic
attacks, violent outbursts, acute anxiety and emotional numbness."

Of course fighting was not restricted to Falluja. Uprisings
in solidarity with Falluja erupted across all of Iraq. In Mosul, Iraq’s third
largest city, fighters effectively chased the police into hiding and took over
the town. Baghdad’s airport has been closed indefinitely.

All this was done, if you will recall, to make Iraq stable
and secure enough for January elections. It was orchestrated to begin after our
election–and with the blessing of Senator John F Kerry.

The sense of déjB vu for those of us from the Vietnam
generation grows stronger. But what’s missing from today’s events are the mass
protests that helped bring an end to that earlier unjust war. Working people
need to build a similar antiwar movement now. It is both our moral duty
and in our material self-interest to put an end to this slaughter of Iraqi and
American workers that serves only our corporate masters.

After Walking That Walk It’s Time To
Talk
At the urging of their leaders, tens of thousands of union volunteers walked
neighborhoods, and otherwise promoted the failed bid of John F Kerry for the
White House. Many of those leaders gathered for an AFL-CIO executive council
meeting this past week in what proved to be a contentious event. I began writing
about this conclave but, as sometimes happens, I found my story turning into a
much bigger project. I am finishing an article on the emerging broader debate
about the future of the labor and social movements in the United States. Those
of you on the KC Labor mailing list can expect notification of posting of this
piece late Sunday or early Monday. If you’re not on the list you can sign up
here.

Ma Bell Offspring Hits a Daily
Double
Those of you who regularly peruse our Daily Labor News Digest will have
noticed two Lucent stories posted the same morning. One reported on new
contracts with CWA and IBEW that require, for the first time, that 70,000
retirees, as well as 3,250 still remaining active employees pay a portion of
their health insurance premiums. Lucent had sold this give-back by pointing out
that their annual health care costs were now an "astronomical" 800 million
dollars. The other article announced a Lucent agreement with the IRS giving the
poor equipment manufacturer a tax refund of 816 million dollars.

A Scandinavian Example Worth Noting
Norway is a small country with about as many people as Philadelphia. Last
Thursday tens of thousands of workers stopped working to protest "reforms" to
Norway’s labor laws that would make it easier for bosses to eliminate jobs and
extend working hours.

My Grief Knows No End
After taking an early retirement, along with a lump-sum payment of my pension, I
was sure my days of filing grievances against the Kansas City Area
Transportation Authority were over. As it turns out it was a good thing I held
on to some of those grievance forms.

The ATA is bound by contract to pay ninety percent of health
insurance premiums for retirees under age 65, rather than the eighty percent
they pick up for active employees. I was therefore somewhat shocked to learn
during open enrollment that I was being told to pay more for my insurance
than what my still working brothers and sisters were signing up for. Repeated
questions about this obvious discrepancy went unanswered or were brushed aside.

Finally, I submitted a written grievance to the deputy
general manager. With a lack of good grace she agreed to get on the phone and
asked some tough questions of those who had blown me off. It turned out that
there had just plain been a screw-up in calculations and they agreed to fix it
and get back to every affected retiree with the corrected figures.

In this case, the near cheating of dozens of retirees out of
thousands of dollars was not an evil plot but merely a fresh example of
management incompetence. It’s a reminder not to ever just assume the veracity of
what the company tells you–also check out their stories and be prepared to hit
them with a grievance if they try to stonewall you.